page_title: Dharam Ablashi
section_title: HHV-6 Research
hierarchical_section_title: Dharam Ablashi / HHV-6 Research
caption_attribution_description: English: Received Honorary Doctoral in Science
context_page_description: Dharam V. Ablashi is an American biomedical researcher born in India. He is best known for his co-discovery of Human herpesvirus 6, an immunosuppressive and neurotropic virus that can cause encephalitis and seizures during a primary infection or when reactivated from latency in immunosuppressed patients. In 2014 Ablashi et al. reclassified HHV-6 into HHV-6A and HHV-6B based on his involvement in various diseases that is HHV-6A in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease, and Multiple Sclerosis, and HHV-6B in DRESS transplantation and that is Kidney, Liver and Bone Marrow transplantation. He has contributed more than 95 papers on HHV-6, most of which appeared in top medical journals and has authored or co-authored over 300 journal articles on herpes viruses. He is internationally known for his research on Human and Simian herpesviruses and has also been a major contributor to research in HIV, Epstein-Barr virus and the field of immunovirology.
  Ablashi co-founded the International House of Rhode Island in 1961 while he was a graduate student at the University of Rhode Island. The house recently celebrated 53 years of existence.
context_section_description: In 1969, Ablashi became a researcher at the National Cancer Institute, NIH. In 1986, while working in Dr. Robert Gallo’s lab, Ablashi, S. Zaki Salahuddin and Gallo together discovered HHV-6; later found to cause Roseola, an infantile disease. He retired from NCI in 1992, but continued serving as an Adjunct Professor of Microbiology at Georgetown University School of Medicine until 2008. He co-edited three books on Human Herpesvirus 6  and served as a consultant to various biomedical companies; as well as NASA, W.H.O. and the United Nations. In 1994 he became Senior Scientist and then Director of Herpesvirus Programs at Advanced Biotechnologies, Inc. and Coordinator of DNA virus studies in the laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Virology at the National Cancer Institute.
  In 2004, Ablashi became the first Scientific Director of the HHV-6 Foundation. In 2005, he established the first-ever extensive HHV-6 & 7 repository of reagents at the HHV-6 Foundation with the help of generous biospecimen donations from his international colleagues. The Foundation makes these reagents available to any scientist and helps researchers interested in studying HHV-6 by offering pilot grants and consulting on HHV-6 matters.
caption: Dharam V. Ablashi
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